Storyline origin of the Beast Wars insignias - think of an explanation.

We're only discussing the storyline here, not how the factions and insignias came to be in toy terms.

The Predacons have an insects' head and the Maximals have a wolves' head (kinda).

But the problem is that they had these same insignias before they went to Earth to become beasts. So not knowing they would become beasts themselves, they have beasts heads for their insignias.

So why do you think that is?

The Predacons is easy - lets say that the Insecticons from G1 formed their own seperate faction and had what would later become the Predacon insignia as their own insignia. And the name Predacon would come from the G1 Predacons. And lets say that Decepticon politics over the years lead to the the Predacon team name and the Insecticon insignia merging together to form the new faction.

The Maximals... I see the word Maximal and I think Maximus. I see the word Maximus and I think Fortress Maximus. So I'll say that the word Maximal was derived from Fortress Maximus. As for the insignia... I think it bears a loose resemblence to the Brazillian Optimus insigniahttp://www.toyarchive.com/Transformers/Brazilian/BrazilianOptimusLogoSmall.jpg
So maybe this became prominent and altered over the years to become the insignia for the new faction.

Since beast wars takes place in the same universe as G1, but afterwards, the transformers would be completely aware of earth life forms, and given the events of G1, I would say that Earth would have a significant impact on Cybertronian culture.

I remember something in the fiction about the Maximals and Predacons developing from a need for more efficient cybertronians with lower energy demands, given the problems of energy scarcity on Cybertron. This makes sense, given how small the beast wars characters were in relation to the G1 characters. I can't remember if it was a licensed storyline, or from somewhere else though, but the idea may be sound.

The predacons could have grown out of the original G1 predacons, possibly integrating the insecticons ability to consume pretty much any matter for sustenance. The insecticons were bugs, and this could have led to the predacon sigil.

As for the maximals, there were a number of canine and mamallian alt-modes in G1, so its possible they just went the same route as the predacons. I don't think it would relate back to Fort Max, though they do have the same latin root, although who knows, given he was a headmaster, and powermasters/targetmasters/headmasters used the same idea of bonding with organic beings as a source of energy, physical power, and weaponry.

In reality: They probably wanted new sigils to show "THEY'RE ANIMALS NOW, SUCKAS" and went with something mammallian looking for the maximals, who were mainly mammals (you could even argue it looks like bat-primal's head), and something icky and bug-like for the predacons, who were mainly bugs and reptiles (and it kind of looks like waspinator's head a bit, doesn't it?). This wouldn't be the first time autobot and decepticon sigils were taken from the faces of their members, as the G1/G2 autobot symbols come from Prowl and Prime's faces, respectively, whereas the G1 decepticon symbol is a dead ringer for Soundwave.

Just like Aernaroth said, they were from the future and had already been in contact with earth and other planets for a while. Oddly enough I also remember reading or hearing the same thing about smaller modes for more efficient energy consumption and I've watched a lot of beast wars/machines eps and never too much side fiction(comics, tech specs for figures, etc).

Just counting the G1 cartoon think about how many transformers there were with animal traits in one mode or another.

And that's just off the top of my head. After that you have the japanese series and things that were only toys with even more cassette animals, pretenders, liokaiser(another 6 bot combiner team), that pretender combiner team(so another 6) the seacons(6 more right there), victory leo, and it just goes on and on without even getting into car robots/RID. And that's all stuff that should have taken place before beastwars beast machines.